TAKING A BOLD STEP FORWARD

WE DID THIS TOGETHER

What happens when the very foundation of your business model…shifts? The world changes and what worked yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that no longer does. United Way of Metropolitan Dallas (UWMD) CEO Jennifer Sampson partnered with Kotter to think differently about the future of giving to United Way. The challenge was clear. Employee-giving campaigns, the bread and butter of their funding, was shrinking year over year. The Internet has made it easy for individual donors to donate directly to any philanthropic effort they wanted to support. The corporately sponsored giving campaigns United Way was most known for were becoming obsolete.

20%

of the organization applied for the Guiding Coalition

$73 million

record breaking funds raised in initial year

1

transformed culture

We worked alongside UWMD to organize a network of passionate, energized employees – the Guiding Coalition – who volunteered to go after the opportunities they saw hidden within the challenge. People don’t always believe that it’s possible for transformation to come from within their team, through their existing people, but UWMD is brilliant proof that it is. Already clocking 60+ hours per week while being super volunteers in their lives, this team discovered capacity to contribute to their own reinvention. They tested and implemented solutions, unpacking decades of “how we’ve always done it” thinking. A a new intranet was developed, making the team more connected, less siloed – transforming communication and culture. Their boldness to think differently has enabled new initiatives to flourish, like a social innovation arm that invests funding, mentorship and community connections to promising social enterprises poised to do tremendous good. The payoff? The most successful fundraising year in the history of United Way of Metropolitan Dallas.

WE COULDN'T HAVE SAID IT BETTER

Hear United Way of Metropolitan Dallas describe how their Big Opportunity fuels the Guiding Coalition network, propelling the organization into a better future.

The Kotter model has allowed us to adapt to the changing needs of our community, donors, and the programs we support. We have empowered team members from across the organization, unleashing talent. It’s been an incredible thing to witness.